The title, which has a cute redaction of the middle word (hint: the word is “torture”), covers the antics over several years during the current century of CIA operatives assigned to get confessions and information from alleged terrorists. The agency wants especially to find out the dates and times and locations of the next attack. The goal is prevent another 9/11, the only foreign attack on our soil since Pearl Harbor.

The Senate investigation committee under Dianne Feinstein (Annete Bening), who relies on special investigator Daniel Jones (Adam Driver), seeks to know two things. 1) Are the CIA interrogators of suspected terrorists using methods that are immoral, that go against America’s stated traditional values? 2) More important, are the interrogators getting valid information that could lead to the capture of terror leaders like Osama bin Laden and could allow the U.S. to thwart future attacks within the United States? The answer, as known now by anybody with the slightest interest in following politics, is “yes” to the first, and a resounding “no” to the second question.

This is a serious movie, one with nary a smidgen of humor. It is needed to educate the public, now regularly taken for a ride by the White House which pretends it is acting in the interests of the people, but it is likely that the core audience will already be familiar with just about everything that emerges. Though “The Report” is a dramatization, which is usually the kind of treatment that is more exciting and hard-hitting than a documentary, just think of what Michael Moore could have done with this kind of subject matter.

There is limited archival film, briefly showing waterboarding, involving throwing a towels around the face of a prisoner and pouring water through the towel giving the suspected terrorist not just the feeling of drowning but actually drowning himself. Another brief shot of rectal hydration that could have you swear off enemas forever features a prisoner on his back, water thrust as threw a fire hose into his anus. Yet another hapless victim is naked, hanging by a wall, while other individuals are being sleep-deprived thanks to heavy metal blasted into the room more loudly than anything you have ever heard in the multiplex.

Writer-director Scott Z. Burns has supplied us with more entertaining scripts, principally “The Bourne Ultimatum” and “The Informant!” but also had produced “An Inconvenient Truth,” which bears at least tangential similarities to “The Report” in advising about global warming and environmental dangers. Anchoring the role of investigator under Senator Dianne Feinstein looking into the secret goings-on of the CIA’s use of enhanced interrogation (a euphemism for torture), Driver’s character, Daniel Jones, works tirelessly for several years putting his nose into buried secrets that in a spy movie would lead to his assassination.

Annette Bening is dolled up to look at least a passable variation of Senator Feinstein, never going overboard with emotions, contrasted against Adam Driver’s barely controlled rage that might make you think that real fireworks will start from him that will turn this into an action thriller.

Ultimately a tells-all report of almost seven thousand pages clears a Senate committee, most Republicans voting to keep it secret and even suggesting that a mere leak of this damning information would be treasonous. Perhaps those of us who believe Edward Snowden to be a hero would be most in favor of releasing the full report without redactions, while those who condemn Snowden might like the nefarious CIA activities to remain secret.

“The (partially redacted) Official Senate Report on CIA Torture” can be had by anyone for $12.99 on Amazon, the company that is now distributing the film. Additionally you can watch the movie on Amazon Prime Video beginning November 29.